The process of approving the use of animals in scientific experiments is in crisis, with animal welfare and scientific members on key ethics committees at loggerheads. Hagar Cohen investigates.

The process of approving the use of animals in scientific experiments is in crisis in Australia, with animal welfare and scientific members on key ethics committees at loggerheads.

It’s the job of animal ethics committees to assess all research proposals that use animals. They look at things like: is the research justified? Can it be done without animals? And how to minimise pain and suffering?

But a range of research scientists and animal rights advocates have told Background Briefing the ethics approval system is broken. Some scientists claim critical research is being delayed or abandoned, while welfare advocates say the committees are simply rubber stamps for controversial experiments.

Karen Stiles was on the board of the Animal Research Review Panel (ARRP) in NSW: the body that oversees the work of ethics committees in the state.

She says in that role she was flooded with complaints from committee members.

‘I supported a lot of the animal ethics committee members who are welfare and lay people,’ she says. ‘And what you found often was that they were disapproved of, they were disparaged, their questions were disparaged. They were belittled.’

Prof Barry Spurr, who was also on the ARRP in NSW, agrees. Although ethics committees are guided by a national code of practice, and a simple principle known as the 3Rs—to reduce the number of animals being used, to refine the methodology to minimise pain and suffering, and to replace animals with non animal alternatives wherever possible—he says that in reality the committees are not doing enough to minimise harm.

‘I would think that the wider community have a false sense of security to the extent that they wonder what has been done in terms of monitoring and accountability in terms of animal experimentation,’ he says. ‘And I would think they shouldn’t be as confident and as assured as they probably are.’

A new national code of practice that regulates ethics committees' work is due to be released later this year. But according to Ms Stiles, even from within the committee it’s almost impossible to stop an experiment.

‘To witness the suffering and the pain and, really, in the final analysis, be able to do very little about it—it was such an entrenched system that the default position was, “is this absolutely necessary?”’

‘People often espouse the three Rs, which is: reduce, refine, replace. The reality was that that wasn’t often done. The refining might be a couple less animals or a little bit less pain, but there was no concerted effort to look outside the box—except by the welfare reps who spend their lives trying to do that.’

But there were also small victories. Once she convinced an animal facility to remove chains from the necks of 50 sheep.‘I can remember being in an agricultural facility where they had sheep in single pens and they were tethered to the front of the pen so they couldn’t move,’ she says. ‘They could move one step forward, one step backwards, but no steps sideways. Sheep are social animals and they like to huddle together. I asked the fellow who was looking after them, “why are these sheep tethered?” And he said, “because sometimes when we put them in there they kick the gate open.” And I said, “so would I if I was there.” And we laughed. I wandered around for a bit, and the sheep—their heads were bowed—they had chains on them. And I said, “what if you put the chain on the gate instead of the sheep?” And he was in stunned silence. And very quietly this man went—to his credit, and my undying respect—[and] unchained all of those sheep in that enclosure and put it on the gate. They’d never thought of it.’

Karen Stiles says she resigned from her committee after she had a nervous breakdown.

On the other side of the process, scientists are also agitating for change. Associate Professor of conservation biology Peter Banks said he was hearing a lot of ‘frustration’ from other scientists, and decided to survey his colleagues around Australia to find out about their experiences with ethics committees.

The results were so striking, they surprised him.

‘Probably the big result that stood out for me is that 37% of researchers are not doing research because they found the animal ethics process was too onerous, that they’d not put in a project proposal simply because they couldn’t deal with the process,’ he says. ‘Not that it was going to get rejected, it’s just that it was too onerous.’

He says the outcome is deeply disappointing for science in Australia. ‘It says that the process isn’t working if people aren’t doing research simply because the process is too onerous.’

Field work at Assoc Prof Banks’s undergraduate classes in wildlife research has now stopped. Again, because of the ethics process.

‘I teach second and third year students who want to do work on mammals,’ he says. ‘They come to university because they love mammals and want to do mammal conservation. We can't do work with them because we can't get the animal ethics process in time. I personally can’t take on interns because I’ve got to get them animal ethics approval. I’ve got to get them on to proposals if they want to do their own individual projects. I’ve got to spend one to two days dealing with the whole process and getting it in. And very often it’s just not worth it.’

Assoc Prof Banks says his work on mammals is not even what the public would normally consider harmful—things like photography in the wild and population monitoring.

‘Even just to put cameras to see what animals are there—these are remote-sensing cameras that if they just passed by, even just with black light, there’ll be no flash, the animal won’t even know it’s gone off. But in New South Wales you need an ethics approval to do that.’

In his survey of 220 wildlife researchers, the vast majority said most of the ethics application process is inappropriate for the work that they do. It’s because the system was designed to deal with lab animals, not animals in the wild.

‘You put in your application, you get an approval, you estimate how many animals you’re going to use in your research,’ he says. ‘And you get more—you catch more in your traps or you see more as a birdwatcher. You don’t have approval to see those individuals so in essence you’re deviating from your protocol. You don’t have approval to do that and in essence you’re breaking the law, which to my mind seems a little bit absurd.’

‘The natural environment is a variable place.’

Assoc Prof Banks says there needs to be a different ethics system for wildlife researchers.

In a statement, a National Health and Medical Research Council spokesperson said that some ethics committees around Australia have adapted their process specifically for wildlife research.

Transcript

Hagar Cohen: The process of approving the use of animals in scientific experiments is in crisis, with animal welfare and scientific members on key ethics committees at loggerheads.

It's mid-afternoon in Melbourne's hospital district, Parkville. Thousands of operations are scheduled; organ transplants, chemotherapy, emergency procedures. But today we are going to the back corridors.

Angela Milligan: We will get you to wash your hands.

Theresa Gibbs: Before we go in we actually have to get changed in here into our gowns and we have an air shower to go through. The air shower just blows the air off us and it allows us to go in.

Hagar Cohen: Behind locked doors and a tight security regime are patients of a very different kind.

Theresa Gibbs: You can see here that you've got the six mouse rooms on the left and the four on the right, so basically once you enter the mouse rooms you can't step back into the clean corridor, you can only exit.

Hagar Cohen: We're at the animal facility of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. It's the oldest medical research institute in Australia.

Dr Catherine O’Brien: They've got a separate project just to make the mice, and then once the mice are made then the researcher puts in the application to actually do experimental procedures on the mice. So this is really where we make our transgenic mice.

Hagar Cohen: It's home to 38,000 mice.

Dr Catherine O’Brien: The researchers get mice of different genetic backgrounds and want to look at the effect of one gene in combination with another gene, so they cross them and then get a more complicated genetic mouse.

Hagar Cohen: These are genetically manipulated mice. They carry many different complex strains of human disease.

Doug Hilton: They are all for research, trying to answer questions about how genes work, which genes might be good targets for new cancer therapies, trying to create the best possible models of human disease so we can test different treatments.

Hagar Cohen: They are bred and they will die at this research institute for our benefit. The director here is Professor Doug Hilton.

Doug Hilton: It might surprise you that mice are actually very, very similar to humans. More than 95% of the genes that are present in mice are also present in humans. So if we can understand what's going on in a mouse as it develops particular diseases, that's often very applicable to people.

Hagar Cohen: In Australia, using animals in science is highly regulated. Animal ethics committees have to approve the work in this laboratory and thousands of others around the country.

Doug Hilton: I think it's absolutely crucial that the community have confidence that researchers are behaving ethically, and a high-quality, rigorous ethics approval system is exactly what we need.

Hagar Cohen: Hello, I'm Hagar Cohen, and today Background Briefing goes inside the ethics approval process. A high-quality and rigorous system may be what the community needs and expects, but people directly involved in the process say that's not what they are getting.

Barry Spurr: I would think that the wider community have a false sense of security to the extent that they wonder what is being done in terms of monitoring and accountability in terms of animal experimentation, and I would think that they shouldn't be as confident and as assured as they probably are.

Hagar Cohen: We discover that in many cases key members of ethics committees and scientists are at loggerheads, and they are coming away from the process scarred.

Karen Stiles: Every day I'm thinking another 1,000 animals have just died because I couldn't change somebody's mind, or I couldn't convince them that there was another way, and that's an horrific burden to carry.

Menna Jones: I have to say that this was the most traumatic event in my entire professional career. We had accusations of cruelty, of loss of trust, that somehow we didn't care about the animals and that we weren't doing enough to save them.

Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing has discovered some other scientists are so frustrated with the system that they've opted to break the law and do their research without ethics approval at all. Others stop conservation work with endangered species because of an ethics process they say is too onerous. On the other hand, animal welfare advocates say that the ethics process is simply a rubber stamp.

The use of animals in science is already contentious. Some believe they shouldn't be used at all. Others want to remove all barriers to experiments in the lab, for the benefit of science. Professor Barry Spurr was on the New South Wales government agency that oversees the ethics process in the state. He is also an animal activist.

Barry Spurr: The ethical problem that the experimentation with animals raises is, first of all, do we have the right to experiment on animals, what gives us the right to do this? And I'm doubtful if we do have the right to do this, but I also have to recognise that I probably, for example, would not be alive if it were not for animal experimentation. For example, I had an appendectomy in 1958 when I was a child. Well, I mean, no doubt some of the medicines that were used and the processes that were used were perfected on animals. So I think one has to be careful about being a hypocrite in these matters.

Hagar Cohen: At the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute an animal technician, Merle Dayton, is working on mice who had been genetically manipulated to be prone to diabetes.

Merle Dayton: After 100 days is when diabetes kicks in to them, so they can become diabetic.

Hagar Cohen: One of the mice here has shown early signs of the disease.

Merle Dayton: It's mouse number three. We can pretty much tell which one it is, it's this one here because he looks a bit hunched and weight-lossy.

Merle Dayton: Basically what we do is we restrain a mouse and mice, when you restrain them naturally should want to urinate, so straight away she is wanting to go to the toilet. We do that, and you just wait a couple of seconds and that will tell us if she is diabetic or not, which she should be, she was yesterday.

Hagar Cohen: And if it's diabetic, then you treat it with a particular type of drug.

Merle Dayton: Yes, to see if that drug will help stop the diabetes or will it increase it, if it has any effect on it.

Hagar Cohen: Experiments like this one have got to go through an animal ethics committee. It's guided by a code of practice which follows a simple principle known as the three Rs; reduce, refine, replace. Reduce the number of animals, refine the experiment to minimise pain and suffering, and replace with non-animal alternatives where possible.

Ethics committee members are divided into four categories; scientists, vets, animal welfare representatives, and lay members of the community. This is to ensure all aspects of animal ethics are covered. Despite criticism elsewhere, the director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Doug Hilton, says that the committee helped them reduce the number of animals used in their research.

Doug Hilton: I think they are continually challenging us to come up with improvements that, for example, reduce the use or refine the use of the animals in ways that both give better scientific experiments and better outcomes, but also better animal husbandry outcomes. For example, the ability to monitor tumours in real-time without having to anaesthetise the animal or sacrifice the animal is something that I think is a really good improvement, and that has been an area that the ethics committees have pushed us to look at.

Ethics committee chairman: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we will start, and if I can just explain what we're going to do first…

Hagar Cohen: Ethics committee discussions are strictly confidential, but in the interests of transparency, Background Briefing was allowed in as the chairman introduced the agenda.

Ethics committee chairman: We have one new project to look at from scratch, and then we have a lot of investigation of amendments that have been requested, so we've got all these projects that are running at the moment and people have said that they'd like to modify animal numbers, mouse strains, protocols, all those types of things…

Hagar Cohen: Committees like these are part of a much bigger bureaucracy. Their code of practice is national and it's regulated by the NHMRC. Most states also have an oversight government agency, and then each university, medical institute or any organisation that uses animals for research has their own ethics committee.

The committee members here had just inspected the animal facility in Melbourne's Bundoora. The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute has two animal facilities. The one in Parkville is where the experiments are performed, and here in Bundoora is where the mice are bred.

Teresa Gibbs: Yes, this is the breast cancer room, so a lot of these get checked a couple of times a week, and then if they show signs of a little tumour we send them in to Parkville.

Hagar Cohen: We're being shown around the facility by animal technician Teresa Gibbs.

Teresa Gibbs: The boxes house up to six adult mice, and some have trios, so they might have two girls and one male with a litter, whether it's one or two litters.

Alan Bolton: Once they have a litter do have to take them out and put them in by themselves?

Teresa Gibbs: At three weeks old we remove the pups away from the parents, if they are healthy. Then normally they are pregnant again and they will have another litter.

Hagar Cohen: The man asking the question there is the animal welfare representative on this committee, Dr Alan Bolton. He's from the Lost Dogs Home in Melbourne. He is impressed with the conditions.

Alan Bolton: When you're looking you want to see that the mice, they are not huddled up in the corner, that they're moving around, they're responsive, they're playing. So that's kind of what you're looking for.

Hagar Cohen: So you're happy so far?

Alan Bolton: Yes.

Hagar Cohen: The other committee members were also satisfied, and half an hour later the inspection is over.

While this inspection went well, at other facilities there's growing concern about the ethics process. Kate Greenup, a theatre nurse at Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne, found a flyer inviting nurses to a workshop. The session, which involved live pigs, was intended to teach the nurses how a particular medical tool is used in surgery.

Kate Greenup: If someone is having a bowel resection or some sort of abdominal mainly surgery, this tool is used to cut and diathermy seal a section of bowel or other organ, so it's like a cutting and sealing process in one.

Hagar Cohen: The live pigs used to demonstrate the tool were anaesthetised.

Kate Greenup: The pigs will then be killed, they will never wake up, obviously, from the anaesthetic. So basically they will be having parts of their stomach and bowels and insides cut up or dissected by this tool, and then they will be terminally…like, a large dose of anaesthetic will kill them after this workshop.

Hagar Cohen: She believes there was no need for pigs to be used in a nurses-only demonstration.

Kate Greenup: There is no purpose. All that the nurse is responsible for is basically to receive the instrument and to assemble it ready for use and then to hand it to the surgeon. They would never themselves use it on an actual patient.

Hagar Cohen: Kate Greenup was determined to try to stop the demonstration. First she spoke to her colleagues. They told her the workshop was quite normal and that at other times greyhound dogs were used for the training. Even more alarmed, she rang Glenys Oogjes from Animals Australia.

Glenys Oogjes: Kate came to me concerned about the fact that this workshop had occurred, clearly concerned about the use of pigs when she thought it was unnecessary. I advised her to take up her concerns with the Bureau of Animal Welfare in order to see whether or not it did have ethics approval.

Hagar Cohen: She says she was concerned about whether this training complied with the NHMRC code of practice.

Glenys Oogjes: I was really appalled, and particularly when she indicated that it was primarily promoted to nurses, to theatre staff, rather than the surgeons themselves. I certainly thought that it would not comply with the code, and so I'm really concerned that it did occur.

Hagar Cohen: And so you've got the code just here in front of you. Can you tell me which particular sections did you feel that it didn't comply with?

Glenys Oogjes: Certainly the general principles of the national code indicate that any scientific and teaching activities which wish to use animals can only be performed if they are essential, and that they are essential to obtain significant information, and that there are no alternatives. It even goes further then, the code itself, when there is a whole section, section six, in regard to teaching and educational uses of animals, and it's even clearer that you have to look to see whether there are any alternatives to it. And the fact is, in educational areas of use of animals there have been incredible developments in alternatives. And so certainly in demonstrating something there are models that you can use. You can of course also simply stand by a person that's using a new procedure or a new implement, see how it is used. Certainly at the outset you don't have to be killing animals to demonstrate it.

Hagar Cohen: Following the advice of Glenys Oogjes, Kate Greenup took her complaint to the Bureau of Animal Welfare. It responded saying the experiment, which ran in two hospitals, was approved by Melbourne University's animal ethics committee. In a letter they said in part: 'There is insufficient evidence that an effective alternative to live animal use is available for this purpose. The fact that the pigs were under terminal anaesthesia meets the requirement that animal suffering be minimised. In this instance the bureau is satisfied that the workshop was conducted legally.'

The letter also said that nurses were invited to participate in the surgeon's workshop, but it didn't confirm whether there was also approval for a nurses-only demonstration. Background Briefing asked the Bureau of Animal Welfare about this. A spokesperson said the bureau couldn't provide this information because the application process is confidential. Kate Greenup's inability to stop the experiment is a common experience for animal welfare advocates.

According to Karen Stiles, who was the animal welfare representative member on a number of committees, even from within the committee it's almost impossible to stop an experiment.

Karen Stiles: To witness the suffering and the pain and really in the final analysis be able to do very little about it. It was such an entrenched system that the default position was this is absolutely necessary. But people often espouse to the three Rs which is 'reduce, refine replace'. The reality was that that wasn't often done. The refining might be a couple less animals or a little bit less pain, but there was no concerted effort to look outside the box, except by the welfare reps who spends their lives trying to do that and then trying to convince people that perhaps there was another way that they can look at it.

Hagar Cohen: Karen Stiles was also a board member on the Animal Research Review Panel. It's the government body in New South Wales that oversees the committees' work in the state. In this role she says she dealt with many complaints from other committee members.

Karen Stiles: So I had a lot of feedback from people both in this state and in other states, and what you found often was that they were disapproved of, they were disparaged, their questions were disparaged, they were belittled.

Hagar Cohen: But there were also small victories. Once she convinced an animal facility to remove chains from the necks of 50 sheep.

Karen Stiles: I can remember being in an agricultural facility where they had sheep in single pens and they were tethered to the front of the pen so they couldn't move, they could move one step forward and one step back, but no steps sideways. Sheep are social animals and they like to huddle together. I asked the fellow who was looking after them, 'Why are these sheep tethered,' and he said, 'Because sometimes when we put them in there they kick the gate open,' and I said, 'Well, so would I if you put me in there,' and we laughed. I wandered around for a bit, and the sheep, their heads were bowed, these were heavy chains that they had on them, and I said to him, 'What about if you put the chain on the gate instead of the sheep?' And there was a stunned silence. And very quietly this man went—and to his credit and my undying respect—unchained all of those sheep in that enclosure and put it on the gate. They'd never thought of it.

Hagar Cohen: Karen Stiles says she resigned from her committee after she had a nervous breakdown.

On the other side of the process, scientists are also agitating for change.

Peter Banks: I've been having quite a lot of discussions with different of people about their experiences with the animal ethics process, I was hearing a lot of I guess frustration from people

Hagar Cohen: Associate Professor of Conservation Biology at Sydney University Peter Banks decided to survey his colleagues around Australia to find out how widespread was this frustration. The results were so striking, they surprised him.

Peter Banks: The big result that stood out for me is the 37% of researchers not doing research because they found the animal ethics process was too onerous, that they had not put in a project, not put in a proposal simply because they couldn't deal with the process. Not that it was going to get rejected, it's just that it was too onerous.

Hagar Cohen: How do you feel about that outcome?

Peter Banks: Well, it is disappointing. It was a telling statistic and I didn't think it would be quite so high. I think it says that the process isn't working if people aren't doing research simply because the process is too onerous. That's not a good balance of welfare against science.

Hagar Cohen: Field work at Peter Banks' undergraduate classes in wildlife research has now stopped, again because of the ethics process.

Peter Banks: I teach second- and third-year students who want to do work on mammals. Many come to university because they love mammals and want to do mammal conservation. We can't do work with them because we can't get the animal ethics process in time. I personally can't take on interns because I've got to get them animal ethics approval, I've got to get them on to proposals. If they want to do their own individual project I've got to spend one to two days dealing with the whole process and getting it in, and very often it's just not worth it.

Hagar Cohen: What does it mean, 'work on mammals'?

Peter Banks: To go out and do some survey on mammals, to find out where they are, even just to put up cameras to see what animals are there. So these are remote-sensing cameras that if the animal just passes by it will just take a picture, even with black light, there'll be no flash, the animal won't even know it's gone off, but in New South Wales you need an ethics approval to do that.

Hagar Cohen: In his survey of 220 wildlife researchers, the vast majority said that most of the ethics application is inappropriate for the work that they do. It's because the system was designed to deal with lab animals, not animals in the wild.

Peter Banks: You put in your application, you get an approval, you estimate how many animals you're going to use in your research, and you get more, you catch more in your traps or you see more as a birdwatcher, you don't have approval to see those individuals, and so in essence you're deviating from your protocol, you don't have the ethics approval to do that anymore and in essence you're breaking the law, which to my mind seems crazy.

Hagar Cohen: So that's mandated in the application, how many birds you're allowed to watch?

Peter Banks: Yes, it is, how many you are allowed to see for the research that's there. And sometimes you just underestimate or overestimate, because the natural environment is a variable place, you don't know exactly how many things you're going to encounter precisely.

Hagar Cohen: Peter Banks says there needs to be a different ethics system for wildlife researchers.

In a statement, an NHMRC spokesperson said that some ethics committees have adapted their process specifically for wildlife research. But there hasn't been a national attempt to change the system.

One of the scientists Peter Banks surveyed is PhD candidate Hayley Bates. Her study at the University of New South Wales looks at the conservation of the Mountain Pygmy possums. It's an endangered species with less than 2,000 left in the wild. A recent research proposal she submitted involved surveying the possums with a camera. She was pulled up by the ethics committee for not having enough information on what type of plastic the camera was made from.

Hayley Bates: I was using cameras out in the field, and they wanted to know what the plastic was that the camera was made out of. And I said I didn't know, and they went into depth over how one of their latest things is BPA plastics and how they should be avoided at all times, and I went, yes, that's great, but I really need to just get these cameras out in the field to find out as much information as possible. They're from a specialised wildlife research place. That frustrated me in a number of ways because it didn't really have anything to do with the welfare of the animal.

Hagar Cohen: This delay nearly stopped her research, as she was trying to set up her cameras before the onset of winter.

Peter Banks says his survey results show researchers are reluctant to complain.

Peter Banks: A lot of people were being frustrated by the process, but they seem unwilling to speak out. 20% said that they'd been intimidated by committee members, 33% said that they found the committees obstructive in terms of their research, but 43% said that they wouldn't complain for fear of the repercussions to their research or their opportunities for promotion.

Hagar Cohen: One researcher will talk about her experience in the hope the approval process can be improved.

Menna Jones: The work that we're doing on the Tasmanian Devils specifically, we're trying to understand the ecology and the epidemiology of the Devil facial tumour disease that is threatening this species with extinction.

Hagar Cohen: In the final stages of one of her studies into the Tasmanian Devils, Menna Jones was expecting to deliver groundbreaking findings. It was on how quickly the facial tumours were spreading, and which Devils in the population were more likely to infect other animals. She put in an ethics application to radio-track Devils using special collars. But to avoid injuring the animals, it was important to monitor them regularly.

Menna Jones: The risks of radio-collaring wild animals, one is that if you've got an animal that when it gains or loses weight, the diameter of its neck changes, so the collar can become tight or it can become loose. If it becomes tight it causes a red sweaty irritation of the skin, and if the collar becomes very loose because the animal has lost a lot of weight it can get a front foot through the collar and that's a far more serious problem. Devils store a lot of fat around their neck, and particularly around the mating season they can gain and lose weight over a period of two or three months. Our means of addressing this is that we were trapping the animals every second month to assess the fit of the collar and to adjust the collars if the animal has changed in its body weight. So we were doing that.

Hagar Cohen: The project was initially given the thumbs up by the University of Tasmania's ethics committee. The Devils were trapped, fitted with the collars, and released.

But then someone complained anonymously about the research. Menna Jones understood that meant her research was suspended, as this was common practice. So she cancelled her next scheduled field trip in January, which was to check if the collars were still fitting the Devils.

Menna Jones was upset because she knew there was a possibility that some of the collared Devils could be injured as a result of her not doing the field trip. She took her concerns about the potential injuries to the next meeting of the ethics committee in February.

Menna Jones: And I did clearly state this in the meeting of the committee, that by delaying a field trip we were now into the mating season, it was going to become very difficult to trap the Devils because when they're mating they're not thinking about hunger or walking into traps.

Hagar Cohen: In that ethics committee meeting she realised there had been a misunderstanding. Despite the complaint, her research hadn't actually been suspended. The ethics committee then asked her to re-trap the Devils to remove their collars, but by then, in March, some of the Devils were seriously injured.

Menna Jones: During that two-month period we had an increase in the number of Devils that had abrasions on their neck, and we did actually have two females, which was very unusual, get a front leg through a collar.

Hagar Cohen: Could this have been avoided in January?

Menna Jones: Yes, absolutely, because we had a longer than normal gap in our trapping regime. There is always a chance that you will miss animals, but the January field trip was designed to catch them just before the mating season.

Hagar Cohen: And did you express these concerns during the February meeting of the..?

Menna Jones: I did. But then when we reported the additional tight collars, and particularly the two animals that got a leg through a collar, which is very distressing, it's awful for the animal, but it's very distressing for the people working on them because we are trying to save the species from extinction and we're passionate about them and we really take a great deal of care with the field work that we do, we reported those to the ethics committee and I'd say communications broke down.

Hagar Cohen: Because of the injuries to a number of the Devils, and others that couldn't be found, the ethics committee did withdraw approval for the research project, and Menna Jones was told to re-trap the Devils that had been missed on the last field trip.

Menna Jones: We were forced, against our best judgement, to trap almost continuously for about three months. We knew that that would be not only counter-productive, trapping continuously, because the animals get trapping fatigue, and there are animal welfare concerns related to continuous trapping because the animals are not getting enough to eat.

Hagar Cohen: The whole experience was distressing for someone whose career had been devoted to helping protect endangered animals.

Menna Jones: From someone who has dreamed of being as a zoologist since they were six or seven years old and working on carnivores and been absolutely passionate about animals, I'd have to say that this was the most traumatic event in my entire professional career. We had accusations of cruelty, of loss of trust, that somehow we didn't care about the animals and that we weren't doing enough to save them. And that just so clearly sits outside where we come from and why we are in this profession, why we do the work.

Hagar Cohen: Background Briefing knows of other cases where scientists completely lost faith in the system. One scientist at Sydney University, who's not a wildlife researcher and would not record an interview, told Background Briefing that there have been instances where research went ahead without ethics approval at all. Doing research without ethics approval is illegal. However, the scientists in this case, Background Briefing was told, were so frustrated with the system, they risked the consequences of breaking the law.

Background Briefing put this to the chairman of the animal ethics committee at Sydney University, Professor David Allen.

David Allen: It would be totally illegal and could not possibly be countenanced by the University of Sydney that people would do experiments without approval. We could potentially be shut down as a research institution if that were discovered, so that would never be countenanced by the University of Sydney.

Hagar Cohen: Professor Allen is not aware of the particular case as he joined the committee only nine months ago.

In 2008 a damning review by the Department of Primary Industries in New South Wales found serious problems with the way the committee was working at Sydney University at that time.

It found that ethics approval had expired for three ongoing research projects. The review also discovered that the ethics process at Sydney University was unnecessarily lengthy. In some cases it was taking six months for research to be approved.

David Allen: Six months would not be typical, but if your application takes six months then you're very unhappy, obviously. Most of our applications would be cycled within one or two meetings, so that means a month or maybe six weeks at the longest. Sometimes the delays are because we are seriously concerned about the procedures involved or the pain or the distress to animals, and then we have no embarrassment about taking a long time to get things right. Where the long time is because the administrative procedures are too slow then that's not acceptable and that's what the university has improved.

Hagar Cohen: The animal ethics system across Australia was set up after a senate inquiry in the '80s. That's when Robyn Sullivan first joined a committee as an animal welfare representative. She stuck to it, and now she's a member on four committees in Melbourne. She says the system today is in disarray. Animals suffer unnecessarily when experiments deviate from what has been agreed on by the ethics process.

Robyn Sullivan: Apart from those experiments where the endpoint involves quite a severe degree of animal disease, much of the other suffering of animals is often due to neglect, lack of monitoring, lack of intervention when animals are detected with problems.

Hagar Cohen: Robyn Sullivan gives an example:

Robyn Sullivan: In an infectious diseases model there may be a number of different strains of a bacteria that had been administered to animals, and they are required by their AEC approval that at any time if any animals becomes unwell the level of monitoring should be increased. An example is where the researcher is not expecting these animals to be ill, and then when animals are found dead they are surprised and there is no really good explanation for why monitoring wasn't increased, why this wasn't reported to someone to investigate and for the welfare of the mice to be observed.

Hagar Cohen: There's a national code of practice that regulates ethics committees. It's now under review, with the new code expected to be released later this year.

As part of this review there's a proposal to increase the ratio of animal welfare representatives and lay members on the committee from a third up to 50%. That worries Professor David Thorburn from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute.

David Thorburn: There is a perception in the scientific community that those members could just attempt to delay the progress of applications as a way of reducing the number of animals that are used.

Hagar Cohen: Research into rare children's diseases is Professor David Thorburn's specialty. He says mouse models are crucial.

David Thorburn: We use mouse models where the mice develop heart disease, for example, and so in order to do that we have made a judgement that the potential benefits outweigh some distress that the animals may suffer. When you work on conditions that are killing children in the first days or years of life it's for many people pretty straightforward to think that this is an area where if animal experimentation might improve outcomes then it's an area where the justification is pretty clear.

David Thorburn: Almost anyone in medical research or in the public would have to say there has to be a code of practice and there has to be ethical oversight because we don't have the right to determine what are appropriate experiments without ethical input, but could it be made quicker so that time and funds raised for medical research are used most productively and that the process moves quickly so the translation of findings can move into clinical practice faster.

Hagar Cohen: Tension between scientists and welfare advocates have always played out in ethics committee discussions, according to Cherie Wilson. She has been an animal welfare member on an ethics committee in Melbourne for 12 years.

Cherie Wilson: You're sitting in a whole roomful of people who think really that you're from another planet. They say that scientists…I think it's always talked about with mice actually, that they see mice as furry test tubes. And I think that is how scientists see animals, they see them as, well, part of the laboratory equipment really. Whereas we see animals as being the priority, they see the experiment as being the priority.

Hagar Cohen: Animal ethics committees are not well regarded in many animal rights circles. But Cherie Wilson was always a bit different to her peers.

Cherie Wilson: Most of the people that you know, the people in the animal rights movement, completely disagree with what you're doing because you're giving a rubberstamp to experiments, you're saying they can go ahead, simply by being on the committee. Generally people are highly suspicious and wonder if maybe you're a spy.

Hagar Cohen: Recently the debate over the ethics in animal experimentation became personal for Cherie Wilson. She was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Cherie Wilson: When I had the breast cancer they said you'll have to have an operation. Everything happens fast, they say, 'Oh, you're in hospital next week and we're going to do an operation,' and I said, 'That's fine,' I thought that's all right. And then after the operation they said, 'Now we're going to do some chemotherapy and radiation.' So I did take the chemotherapy, even though I didn't feel that comfortable about it…yes, if there is a drug and it's available I will take it. However, for future drugs I'd really prefer that we looked into alternatives.

Hagar Cohen: How can you reconcile your position, which is opposing experimentation with animals, and then taking medicine that was being used on animals?

Cherie Wilson: Simply is not a black and white world. That's my only answer to that.

Hagar Cohen: While on the committee, she quickly discovered there were many limitations to the system. For instance, she found that challenging the merits of experiments that were privately funded was often difficult.

Cherie Wilson: There was one experiment that I was totally opposed to but there was no way I would have been able to stop it because it was well funded. This research, it was looking into the effect... the problem is they're finding that an increase in stress decreases reproductive ability. So what they were doing was they were injecting different things into the brains of sheep and trying to look at exactly what was going on.

I was thinking why are we trying to find something to counteract the stress, why are we looking into how you can still be stressed and yet reproduce? I remember I did stand up and I said, 'I really think we're wasting a lot of animals here by continuing to do this basic research,' and I was told to get back in my box…

Hagar Cohen: Because it was well funded?

Cherie Wilson: It was well funded, the person doing it was very well respected in the scientific world.

Hagar Cohen: Another well known limitation of the system is the extent to which the committees discuss alternatives to animals. The code says they have to. But in reality, that often doesn't happen.

Professor Barry Spurr was the animal welfare representative on the New South Wales Animal Research Review Panel.

Barry Spurr: The argument that one encounters is that it's impossible to do this with anything other than live animal experimentation, so replacement is addressed by saying that it's impossible.

Hagar Cohen: What's your capacity as the animal welfare representative to respond to these arguments?

Barry Spurr: Well, this is the problem in so many of these areas of course, you really do need the scientific knowledge to argue your corner. Just reading the protocols, they were, to the untrained mind, gobbledygook. I would constantly pose questions. My memory is that they were always politely answered but there was always something of the sense that these sorts of questions were away from the main business of what was going on. And I rarely sensed that there was a strong engagement with the ethical matters.

Hagar Cohen: The chairman of the animal ethics committee at Sydney University, Professor David Allen, concedes that one of the Rs in the code of practice, replacement (with non animal alternatives), is rarely raised.

David Allen: I freely admit we don't reject many applications and say we think you could do that some other way. Perhaps if we had a different composition we would, but the truth is we don't do that very often.

David Allen: I admit we don't spend much time on that, but that's because the people who are sending us applications are mature scientists, they read the NHMRC code of practice just as we do and they wouldn't send us anything that didn't fit the code of practice, by and large.

Hagar Cohen: When Karen Stiles started her work with ethics committees in the '90s, she was certain that with time the ethics process would be dismantled. She hoped that alternatives would be developed to make animal experiments completely redundant. Karen Stiles says she was devastated when she realised that that was never going to happen.

Karen Stiles: My hope for the future was that, as a clever species, humans would create other ways of doing things, with computers, simulations and everything else. That was my hope for the future, that one day I would be not needed. What I found is that they discovered fabulous new ways of genetically engineering these animals, and I think that they are probably using far more animals now than they were in those days and there is a hell of a lot more suffering.

Credits

Comments (28)

JK :

03 May 2013 2:53:52pm

Well done ABC for raising this issue. I am a conservation ecologist with over 20 years experience, currently working in the field. As Prof Banks states, the current ethics permit system is unwieldy, with wildlife research projects assessed by the same committee overseeing animal experimentation. The requirement to obtain permits for standard wildlife survey techniques, including birdwatching or deployment of remote cameras, is ridiculous and consumes valuable time and effort. A more appropriate system for wildlife research would involve the determination of suitable 'codes of conduct' for wildlife survey techniques, with only projects that sought to go outside those bounds requiring specific ethics permits.For wildlife, the ultimate ethical issue is whether or not we conserve them. To do so, we need to conduct appropriate research and monitoring. As noted by Prof Banks, the current ethics system inhibits the conduct of wildlife research, and thus at a fundamental level has a perverse outcome.

Lauren Taylor :

03 May 2013 4:21:29pm

The National Health and Medical Research Council needs to take a look at where they are directing the vast majority of their federally funded grants. Instead of continually relying on the use of animals as a suitable model for human based medicine, this needs to be urgently reviewed and replaced with an emphasis on in vitro, in silico, computer modelling and genomics-based medicine. Ultimately these methods will be far more predictive of pharmaceutical products, carcinogens and toxins in humans. The difference in the absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion of other species renders data obtained from animal modelling unable to be extrapolated to humans with any level of predictivity.

Margaret Middleton :

05 May 2013 3:46:03pm

I am delighted that a transcript is available for this program, but very disappointed that other contributions to it, from Menna Jones in particular, and the lass studying pygmy possums, have not been included. They both provide powerful evidence for the need to reform the role of ethics committees in attempts to conserve our wildlife

Al :

Rob Buttrose :

04 May 2013 10:35:35pm

The NHMRC is to be condemned for funding in Australia for many years years harmful, non-therapeutic experimentation on animals, where the benefits did not even begin to ethically justify the impacts. (Some examples of such studies where animals are tortured, mutilated and killed for relatively trivial purposes can be found here http://www.humaneresearch.org.au/). AECs operate in secrecy against the principles of openness and transparency in a democratic society, in many instances marginalise their "independent" members and the Code of Practice, under which the AECs are regulated, is a sham, mostly designed to protect the interests of the biomedical research community. There needs to be a government enquiry, if not a Royal Commission, held into the animal experimentation industry as soon as possible.

JC :

06 May 2013 9:07:36pm

Scientists are devoted to trying to find cures for human disease. These treatments are also used by veterinarians for treatment of pets. Pets are given insulin for diabetes, anti-inflammatory drugs for arthritis and even chemotherapy for cancer. All of these have been tested on animals. Do you question animal testing for medical research when you take your dog to the vet?

Rob Buttrose :

09 May 2013 3:04:36pm

It is right and proper that scientists are working to find cures for human diseases that cause great suffering. It is perhaps not right that that so much effort is being put into researching illnesses that are the result of lack of physical activity, diet (including eating meat) and other lifestyle factors. In either case, no researcher has the right to do anything they like to further medical knowledge. No one has right to experiment on other people, for example, without their consent. If we could perform experiments on hobos , prisoners and others whom nobody cares about, we could advance medical knowledge tremendously, much more rapidly that we do now with unreliable and inapplicable animal models. But we do don’t such experiments. They would be callous, cruel and plain wrong, harming sentient beings that have a right not to be so harmed, irrespective of benefit to others. We should apply the same ethics to animals. In Australia today there are callous and often cruel medical researchers who have completely lost their moral compass, who think they are God and that they can inflict great harm and suffering on sentient creatures just by claiming benefit or even potential benefit to humans. As the program shows, they are protected by a weak AEC system and a Code of Practice that licences almost any animal use. Every day, these researchers cause harm and suffering to animals in labs in acts that would be serious offences under the Cruelty to Animals legislation of the states if committed by anyone outside the protected experimentation industry. They must and will be brought to account.As for the benefits of animal research, there is great debate but any fair assessment of the evidence would be that the benefits are not as great as claimed by the biomedical research community. Further, you cannot say what would have been independently discovered without the use of animals about e.g. cancer, anti-inflammatory drugs and diabetes. Similarly, you cannot say what will or will not be discovered in the future when animal experimentation as practised today is rubbed out. I have no doubt that medical advances will continue without abusing animals. They will be made by treating animals that are already sick, rather than taking healthy animals, making them sick by infection, surgery or mutilation, trying out a drug and then killing them for analysis which is today’s model and the reason for so many abominations. Other advances will be made by the use of animal-free alternatives such as in vitro research, nanotechnology, phage display and genomics.

I will allow my pet to be treated by techniques and drugs that have been tested on animals as far as one can determine these things (most such treatments are the result of several lines of research, not all of them involving animals). I will consent to such treatments in my own case too. I respect the sacrifice made by animals in the past even though I condemn the industry that sac

Rob Buttrose :

09 May 2013 3:07:50pm

I will allow my pet to be treated by techniques and drugs that have been tested on animals as far as one can determine these things (most such treatments are the result of several lines of research, not all of them involving animals). I will consent to such treatments in my own case too. I respect the sacrifice made by animals in the past even though I condemn the industry that sacrificed them. As pointed out above, it will not be clear in most instances that treatments would not have been developed without harming animals. In any event, I cannot do anything about what has happened already. What counts is the future, hopefully the very near future, when the wickedness of animal experimentation is no more.

Amanda Gearing :

05 May 2013 8:26:06am

Ethics approvals for research in other discipliens eg arts, are now being assessed in some instances by the NHMRC. In journalism research, interviewing poeple is interpreted as 'human research' and students are required to fill in a 25 page online form designed for assessing medical research. Many of the questions are irrelevant.There is a new field of research emerging in 'ethics creep' in which restrictive ethics protocols are 'creeping' into research fields so much that research is just not being carried out. A glance down the list of topics of PhD theses at any University graduation shows research is mostly restricted to light-weight research topics that students can get through the ethics committees.

Pete :

05 May 2013 7:36:57pm

I thought this program was shambolic - it couldn't decide if ethics committees are too strict or not strict enough.

The long interview with the researcher into Tasmanian Devils was particularly problematic. She admitted that there had been a misunderstanding, and it was not the Ethics Committee's intent that she stopped monitoring the welfare of tagged Devils. In fact, it sounded like it was her mistake. Imagine a scenario where someone has Ethics approval to conduct laboratory research on rats. A complaint is made, and the researcher forms the belief approval has been suspended. What would they do, stop feeding the rats? Release them? Euthanase them?

This is analogous to what this researcher did - they thought approval had been suspended, so they stopped all welfare monitoring of the Devils. Even if the Committee miscommunicated its wishes, how could you possibly interpret that as requiring you to leave tagged Devils to come to harm? This is a researcher who does not seem to understand the purpose of Ethics Committee approval (like others interviewed).

devil lover :

06 May 2013 4:49:09pm

This is an unfair appraisal- the researcher had built-in plans to do welfare based monitoring and is clearly passionate about saving this species- the suggestion that she's guilty of neglect here is totally unfair- she wanted to do the very monitoring you say she should have done

seems to me to highlight what the spectre of animal ethics committee can do to researchers-she was totally stymied by vacillation by the committee. If she continued to trap without current approval she's at risk of a jail term- who would take the risk? And she couldn't simply monitor without actually catching the devils (thus need approval) so your lab rat analogy doesn't hold.

In any case it was the researcher highlighting the welfare implications of not monitoring (as the expert in the biology of the species) rather than the ACEC who seemed to take the complainant more seriously than the researcher.

Also the only people on the program who don't understand the purpose of the Ethics Committee are the two committee members who are fundamentally opposed to animal experimentation.

Qwerty Mass :

06 May 2013 5:06:44pm

Sounds like just a communication issue to me, not part of a systematic problem with ethics committees. I would have liked to have heard the point of view of the Committee on this. Did it ever give a formal notice that the project was suspended?

Malcolm France :

05 May 2013 10:56:19pm

Several of the cases cited here seem to reflect poor communication or under-resourcing of Animal Ethics Committees rather than a fault in the system itself. The system is unlikely to be effective if it is just seen as an administrative process. Institutions should be encouraged to promote ethical discourse, bring committee members and scientists together, and provide training and access to resources such as those offered by the MAWA Trust for alternatives.

JC :

06 May 2013 9:50:21pm

I am a scientist. I do not think AEC committees are under resourced, I think they are totally inefficient. At the institution I am now at our committee has had 2 new administrators employed in the last year but the timeliness of simply reporting to scientists that the ethics has been approved has not improved. In my experience ethics applications are held up by many months mainly because the committee cannot understand what the scientist is trying to do. Research is highly specialised and difficult for anyone not directly working in the area to understand. The committee should only be concerned with what happens to the animals but more and more detail is required about the actual project. In addition, projects approved in one building can be rejected in the building next door. The degree of frustration for the scientist is becoming extreme. Research only staff are on contract and have limited time to complete a study (usually 3 years). If a simple change in protocol needs to be made because of a discovery made in the previous experiment, this can take 2 months or more to get passed. How can researchers make discoveries, and be competitive enough to get funding in the future for their research?

At a prior institution the scientist was required to appear at the committee meeting and answer questions about their submission. This was beneficial for all as the animal welfare members were able to meet the person who was conducting the work and get direct explanations of what they aimed to do. It was rare that a second meeting needed to be held. If there were no issues at the end of the meeting, the project was approved and the paper work caught up.

Scientists are not evil animal murderers. We believe in medical research for the good of mankind. I do not know of anyone who would mistreat their experimental animals. Everyday we are faced with the decision of whether what we do to the animal is for the greater good of medical research and may one day save someone. Not one of us wants to see animals suffering.

My prediction is that research in Australia at this rate is in demise. The work will go on but in countries where the bureaucracy does not impede progress. The brain-drain will continue.

Qwerty Mass :

06 May 2013 11:12:06pm

If a scientist can't explain their proposals to an AEC they shouldn't be allowed to proceed. Unless an AEC understands the benefits of an activity it can't make a decision on it's justification. An AEC stands as a proxy for public opinion, and it's approval based on the belief that a project benefit outweighs it's welfare cost is the only thing standing between a researcher and prosecution for animal cruelty.

Researchers have no 'right' to work with animals. They must justify their work to the community through an AEC. If they can't do that, then too bad.

Malcolm France :

07 May 2013 7:43:06am

JC's frustration is understandable but the problem seems to reflect administrative or resourcing issues rather than a fault in the AEC system itself. (See Code of Practice clauses 2.2.10(i), 2.2.21 and 2.2.23).

I have to question the statement that "The committee should only be concerned with what happens to the animals". The Code of Practice by which AECs are legally bound is not just about animal welfare - it also forms an ethical framework. See for example clauses 1.2 and 2.2.15.

NezWez :

06 May 2013 12:24:23pm

I worked at one of Australia's oldest universities. I spent three months redoing their "Care for research animals" instructions.I cried everyday. I'm crying now just thinking about it. It is not care, it is not fair, it is not just, it is just horrible. Open wounds, chemicals, loneliness then death. If we want to test things, get volunteers. Why do other animals have to pay the price for our desire to live longer or look better. Hate. Hate. Hate.

JC :

JC :

06 May 2013 9:52:54pm

Go and visit the dementia ward at a nursing home - preferably where one of your relatives is living. You will see wounds, chemicals, loneliness and there will be death. This is what scientists are trying to prevent. Rats or humans? The choice is yours.

Clancy :

06 May 2013 1:58:25pm

Thank you for this program. I suspect there is a cultural blindness within the animal research community, so using animals in this way is seen as normal. The welfare advocates are doing a good job of raising issues; these need to come to the public's attention much more. I was particularly astonished at the example given about the pigs being used for nurses to practice surgical techniques when nurses would never perform that role in theatre. I agree that the animals would not suffer during the procedure or after because they were going to be given a fatal overdose of anaesthetic, but cannot agree it was acceptable to use animals for this purpose.

This blindness is not a fault of researchers alone, much of our society seems to suffer it - overcrowded paultry sheds, live export, dogs kept chained up, pets abandoned because their owners moved house - disrespect for animals is deeply rooted in our culture. I am hopeful the welfare advocates and groups such as Voiceless will make people aware there are other ways.

Mark Lawrie :

06 May 2013 2:45:23pm

I sat on ARRP with Karen back in the 90s as an animal welfare member and then again several years later after she had left in the 00s. Although there are flaws and faults that can be found with the system in Australia in regards to the animal welfare regulation of research we have many advantages over many other countries. A process of continuous improvement has occured. I have sat on a number of large animal ethics committees and have been impressed with the way that they have operated in giving respect to all the members, welfare and independent included. The fact that criticism is coming from both sides in this story may be symptomatic that the system is working well and work should continue to refine it in the ways that are happening.

Qwerty Mass :

06 May 2013 3:57:38pm

It's a shame Hagar didn't ask Melbourne University about the nurse training using pigs. If she had, she would have found out that the workshop was for training surgeons, something completely in accordance with the Code. The nurse presence was voluntary and only as part of the surgical team. I wonder why Melbourne University wasn't asked?

Melman :

07 May 2013 2:54:04am

This subject makes me annoyed. There's a big elephant in the room: nobody is required to justify eating animals. So for animal usage with no animal suffering (such as an anesthetized pig for demonstrating surgical procedures), this should be *easier* not harder than going to the supermarket to eat pork tonight. Demonstrating a surgical procedure *even to nurses* is of more benefit than tasty pork for tonight's dinner.

Furthermore, we eat orders of magnitude more pigs than are used for demonstrating surgical procedures.

Furthermore, there is more suffering in the food industry (they don't anesthetize the pig before killing it).

Anybody truly concerned with the death of an anesthetized pig for demonstrating surgical procedures should be completely beside themselves every time they go shopping *whether or not they buy/eat meat*. They should start there and leave the poor nurses alone!

cmcm :

Are the regulations really too onerous, as some of the researchers maintained? There was no attempt to get to the bottom of it and at the end the listener is no wiser.

Are the procedures lengthy and problematic? It's a mixed bag, it seems.

Some of the anti-Animal Ethics Committee comments came from people who whose outlook was profoundly against animal experimentation. I personally hate gambling but I have enough sense to avoid employment in the gambling sector. Maybe these malcontents should realise that there is an ethical gulf between their beliefs and participation in this regime.

Animal lover :

J Gillies :

11 May 2013 6:01:19pm

While I applaud the efforts of the wildlife researchers in trying to save the Tassie Devil I was gobsmacked by what came out from the long interview with Menna Jones. I don't doubt that she was well intentioned but Menna, please, think about it again and take some responsibility. You said yourself that you only assumed that your project was suspended, but why didn't you check given you knew what was at stake? You also admit that even if you had continued your trapping regime that you can always miss some animals. You say yourself what the terrible risks are using those collars yet you went ahead anyway. Perhaps this was the complaint that went to the AEC? Subjecting any animal to the very real risk of having its foot caught permanently in a collar is not a risk that should be taken despite your admirable goal. Now I am worried that such collar use continues and the pain and suffering of individuals effected haunts me. Please find a better method to do your good and worthwhile work.